


Doctor's Orders

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s07e12 Evolution (2), Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-16
Updated: 2010-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:34:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack takes care of Daniel after Nicaragua under the guidance of a friend</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor's Orders

**Author's Note:**

> The fic contains mention of PTSD and torture, but nothing graphic.

_“He needs a safe haven, Colonel, not my infirmary. He also needs quiet and lots of rest. Any inquisition you had planned can take a raincheck.”_

 _“He can talk if he needs to Doc, and tell me to fuck off if he wants to.”_

 _“Then I think we’re on the same page here."_

 _> >>>> _

He’s home. My home that’s always been his home. It’s evening and there’s a dog barking and kids playing in the street.  We try to eat pizza and fail to listen to his favourite piano concertos (his eyes close and he turns his head away, can’t stand the aching emotions in the Preludes that usually fill him with peace). We fail to talk about nothing at all and try to pretend that it’s just another Tuesday.

And then he says, “Take me to bed,” fingers rubbing absently at the sore spots left by the boot marks. My hands clench in rhythm to the, slow, circular movements.  

 _“It was a brutal, sustained assault, physical and psychological. I have no idea what his response will be once he has time to think about it instead of simply surviving it. It’s a lot to ask of anyone to deal with that in another person, Colonel.”_

 _“Yes it is. Having been through it myself I know that.”_

 _“Is this you telling me that I’m teaching you how to suck eggs?”_

 _“Doc. Would I do that?”_

 _Yes. Colonel. You would.”_

He shuffles off toward the bedroom. He minimizes the limp when he thinks I’m looking. I lock the house down for the night and join him in the darkened room, where he stands, like he’s lost or looking for something, on his side of the bed. He turns his body half-way from me, thinks I can’t see the bruises and burns, but I can. I can see the damage even behind closed eyes. He strips down to briefs and T then hesitates, grabbing a fistful of cotton. He comes to a decision after fighting himself over it. He leaves the T-shirt on.

 _“Will_ _you tell me? If you see signs of PTSD?”_

 _“Is it required?”_

 _“If we’re to deal with it and I’m to sign him off as being ready for active duty eventually, yes.”_

 _“Will it go on his record?”_

 _“It should.”_

 _“That’s a good answer.”_

 _“Then will you?”_

 _“I’ll get back to you on that.”_

I move close, ease the grip of his hand on his T-shirt. “Whatever you’re comfortable with,” I say quietly. Like it ain’t no big thing, this fucking heartbreaking uncertainty and insecurity. He doesn’t look at me. His self-directed anger is palpable. He thinks this shouldn’t be a thing.

He takes off his glasses and places them on the nightstand in a slow, overly-deliberate movement. He’s stalling. He’s one step away from suggesting ...

“Maybe I should take the spare room. My leg. Sleeping’s difficult. I’ll probably toss and turn.” He straightens the lamp which isn’t quite four-square on the nightstand. Maybe a whole inch out of true with the grain of the oak.  Maybe he doesn’t recognize the metaphor. I do. I could fucking weep.

“Get in the bed, Daniel.  You think I’ll sleep if I’m here and you’re there? I’ll just lie awake wondering if you’re awake, while you lie there awake wondering if I’m awake.  As pointless exercises go, that’s pretty pointless.”

He thinks about if for a minute, then slips under the sheet in a way that tells me a whole hell of a lot about how much his leg is hurting.

“I’ll get your painkillers,” I say.

“No.” It’s vehement and immediate.

“Daniel ...”

“I hate the way they make me feel.”

“You hate that they make you feel even the tiniest bit out of control. Because you didn’t have control of anything in that hut and you can’t bear anything that reminds you of that feeling.” Sometimes, hitting Daniel upside the head with the truth is the best way forward. He glares at me, half annoyed and half relieved that I get it. Fuck, do I get it.

He pulls the sheet up to chest height, shifts to get his leg comfortable.

“I fucking hate it when you’re right,” he mutters.

Thank christ. The first sign of real Daniel pissiness (not stubbornness, that’s something else) since we got back from South America.

He sighs and gives the briefest of nods. I head for the bathroom, for water and pills.

 _“You know I can’t tell you everything his examination and medical debrief revealed.”_

 _“Yes.”_

 _“You know I would tell you anything I thought was germane to his functioning as an effective member of your team."_

 _“Yes.”_

 _“Good. Do you also know I would go further if I thought it pertinent with regard to his  ... personal circumstances?”_

 _“I  ....”_

 _“He wasn’t raped, Jack.”_

 _“Well then ... now I know you’d go further.”_

He tenses as I ease into bed; not sure if it’s the fear of pain in his leg flaring as the mattress dips or the soon-to-be-unavoidable intimacy -- possibly physical but more likely emotional -- that lies behind that sudden tension. I turn onto my side, facing him, close but not too close. Close enough that he can make the move to reach out easily, if he wants to. He lies on his back, staring at the ceiling like it holds the secrets of the universe.

“In the interests of full disclosure, I wasn’t raped,” he says matter-of-factly. He could be saying he’s run out of coffee for all the feeling involved.

“Daniel ...” He doesn’t have to tell me this stuff. “You don’t have to ...”

“Yes. I do. I want to lay out some facts and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt and I don’t want to talk about it or analyze it afterwards.  Okay?”

Whatever he needs. “Okay.”

“ _Promise me one thing, Colonel. If he does talk, you’ll listen. I don’t need to tell you that opening up is difficult for him."_

 _“Daniel talks a lot, Doc. He just doesn’t always tell you very much.”_

He licks his lips, then takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.  As he starts to talk, it feels like he’s stepping off a cliff. “To start with, it was pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. Threats, more threats and then beatings. Tell us what the device is ... your Government has to pay up or you’re both dead. And deprivation, of course. We had no water and little food at first and they wouldn’t let us sleep. After a few days, I got into the rhythm of it. Bill didn’t. Couldn’t. He started to crack mentally pretty quickly, and I’m not decrying him for that or blaming him. I’m just saying that’s how it was. He veered wildly from being sure we’d be rescued to being sure we were about to be taken out and shot.  I gave up reassuring him, just tried to ... be there ... for him. Turns out I’m not so great at the whole stoic support thing. We actually stopped talking much at all about five days in. That was when they ramped up the ...”

He winces, his distaste for the word he can’t say written all over his face. He reaches out his hand and I take it in mine. His skin is cool and a little damp and it’s almost impossible not to stroke and rub some warmth into it, but that would be a distraction right now.

“Raphael was fond of pistol-whipping, he was good at it, too, but his real love was electrodes.”

His hand tightens its hold and starts to shake but the voice is still calm and steady. “He attached them to my nipples, then graduated to armpits – who knew that would be so effective – and finally my balls. I passed out several times. Not before the pain registered though. It was at that point I prayed Bill would give them what they wanted. How massively fucking selfish is that? Let Bill be the one to crack because then the pain would stop and I could still say I never gave in.”

This is so hard for him.  He usually buries emotional shit so deep it never sees the light of day again. Speaking the words is making it real in a way it wasn’t back in the jungle.

“I was scared, Jack. So fucking scared.”

His fingers have turned white, so fierce is his hold on my hand. My fingers are going numb. I wish to god the rest of me was too. My heart is fucking breaking.

“Bill said I called your name once, when I was coming round in the shack, after Raphael ...  I used to do that, didn’t I? Back in the day. Whenever I woke up in the infirmary or I’d been zapped or something. Bill took it as reassurance that I knew you were coming for us.”

He turns his face towards me, limned in the spare, harsh light coming through the blinds from the streetlamp. His features are ethereally haunted and so very beautiful.

“I wanted to believe that, Jack. But the truth is ... inside... I was ready to die.”

 _“I’m hoping if he unburdens himself to you, we can avoid any professional intervention, Colonel.”_

 _“He’ll see a shrink over my rotting corpse, Doctor.”_

 _“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”_

A silent tear runs down his cheek and settles into his sideburn. It’s not a cathartic unburdening. Just a bleak coda to the flow of words. Can’t not lick the salt droplet from where it lands, my tongue gentle. He gasps at the touch. Closes his eyes. The tension in his body speaks of something else now.

His eyes find mine. “Please,” he says, and the word drops away, half-articulated, from his lips and vanishes. There will be no begging here. No pleading. There’s been too much of that.

I place two fingers gently against his lips. Mouth “Sshhh” without making a sound, but he understands well enough. I can’t stand to hear that “Please.” I’m astonished that he feels able to say it, but he trusts me. He trusts me with the worst of himself. The privilege of that is overwhelming.

He shifts on to his side and if there is pain in his leg he’s not feeling it, and then he lets go of my hand, squeezing it gently by way of apology as he loosens his hold. Then he brings the hand up to my face and traces the shape of cheekbone and jaw, rubs a thumb over my scarred eyebrow.  His eyes never leave my face, like he’s making sure I’m really here and that this good touching is real, not some construct of a fractured mind that is taking him where he needs be in order to survive.

When he’s done enough mapping and exploring, he leans in and brushes his lips against mine. It’s whisper-like, tentative and honest and impossibly beautiful. But he makes everything possible, even this impossible thing that they call love but is really so much more.

His tongue touches my top lip, then bottom lip, and then he’s pressing in and I open to him, accepting his kiss, welcoming it as it deepens and becomes heated and urgent. He tastes of desire and need, and I can’t not respond to that.

He pulls away, lies down on his back and reaches for me again. I shift close, kiss him again, long enough and deep enough that he makes a desperate, muffled “Unnf” sound in the back of his throat.

His fingers grasp suddenly at sheets. He finds soft cotton, not rush matting. His fists clench and a frown appears, creasing his brow. He was back there, just for a second. Not a flashback, just an eyeblink of memory, but enough to make him doubt.

I lean down and kiss the frown, feel the skin crease more beneath my lips as he questions the reality. So I leave my mouth there until I feel the lines start to disappear, and along with the lines goes the tension. Finally.

“I love you. You know,” I say, because I have to say it.

This time, he places fingers against my lips and mouths, “Sshhh.” I get that, too. Show, don’t tell.

So I show him.

I bend down push the T-shirt up slowly, exposing bruise-mottled skin, and he lets me. I kiss and lick each of his scarred nipples, eliciting a soft, involuntary, “Ohhh.”  Then I move back up his body, run my hand up his arm and let the arm fall, bent, above his head, and I kiss and lick the armpit. The smell is elemental, earthy, so very Daniel. I nuzzle and lick, pressing my tongue into the tufts of hair and sensitive skin, which always turns him on. He gasps, arches a little and when I look down, his cock is full and jutting. I repeat the process under his other arm and he moans, a deep, guttural sound that goes straight to my groin.

His eyes are closed now and he’s losing himself to the feeling, all the shock and pain of that stinking, fetid jungle shack receding to be replaced by only good things. At least for now.

I use my hands to stroke some warmth into his body, a firm, constant pressure of slow movement. Could keep that up for hours but his body is quivering with a real need for something more and there’s no way he’s going to be made to beg for it.

Carefully, wary of jolting his leg, I move down his body, licking and kissing, making love with fingers and lips until I reach his cock, which is leaking and rosy. Lower still, I kiss his balls, mouth each one tenderly, which makes him cry out and then breathe a sibilant “Yessss.”

His shaking hands grip my head, all the indication I need to go down on him, taking his cock in my mouth in a single, loving action. And that’s all it takes to make him come in a trembling surge. He pours his fear and anger down my throat and I take it all until he has nothing else to give.

Sated, exhausted, his body relaxes and warms beneath my hands. He snuggles in and I hold on, tucking his head under my chin.

“Jack,” he whispers against my neck as he falls asleep. He’s calling for me, like he’s done a hundred times before, trusting that I’ll be there.

“I’m here,” I whisper into the darkness.  I should have been there when he was tortured. But I’m here now. “I’m here.”

 _“I want to see him again in 48 hours.”_

 _“Yes, ma’am.”_

 _“If he doesn’t take his medication and the wound on his leg deteriorates, there will be repercussions.”_

 _“Yes, ma’am.”_

 _“Now quit haunting my office so that I can get his release paperwork completed.”_

 _“Yes ...”_

 _“And enough of the ma’am.”_

 _“Okay Doc. And Doc ...”_

 _“Yes, Colonel?”_

 _“Thanks.”_

ends


End file.
